


the greatest loves of all time are over now

by silvervelour



Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: Angst, F/F, author had some feelings she needed to get out, vague vague smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:53:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25536142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silvervelour/pseuds/silvervelour
Summary: They meet through friends of friends of friends, and with Jackie comes the tangerine that Jan paints her walls. She helps Jan replace the missing light bulb in her hallway, and screws one in that’s so new and bright Jan feels overwhelmed by it. Her eyes squint up at it, still adjusting from the dark, but Jan doesn’t complain because she needs it. She can see the cracks in the ceiling more clearly, and the white of Jackie’s sneakers appear fluorescent on the rack next to the doorway. Together they fill in the cracks and Jan might have to stand on a stepladder to do it but it works.
Relationships: Jackie Cox/Jan Sport
Comments: 22
Kudos: 29





	the greatest loves of all time are over now

**Author's Note:**

> hi pals!! this is different for me, and lot shorter than my usual fics, but I was feeling some type of way and this fic helped me feel less shit lmao. I hope you like it, or not, or whatever you feel like!! 
> 
> 70's fic ch4 coming soon!!
> 
> love y'all<3

Jan’s love for Jackie is a light bulb. 

A light bulb that had been missing from the lampshade in the hallway of her apartment since before they’d met. The grey dome had been hanging from the cream speckled ceiling, with cracks surrounding it, bleeding into the corners or the room. Jan had watched them grow bigger each time that she passed underneath them, walked from the alcove of her bathroom and into her bedroom. Her walls had been painted a forest green from the previous tenant and she’d never thought to change it to something brighter, something more uplifting. 

The dreariness calmed her, made her feel at ease when her long work hours did the opposite. She was able to take the subway home to her Hell’s kitchen walk up and even if the sun was still shining in the late summer evenings, her space wouldn’t be. It would be colder than outside with its archaic brick walls, and the air conditioning that her landlord had installed. Jan would pull herself under the covers of her bed and fall asleep within the hour. It’s why altering the colours that she surrounded herself with hadn’t seemed important.

Until Jackie. 

_ “Come home with me”. _

_ “How far is your place?”. _

_ “Couple of blocks”.  _

They meet through friends of friends of friends, and with Jackie comes the tangerine that Jan paints her walls. She helps Jan replace the missing light bulb in her hallway, and screws one in that’s so new and bright Jan feels overwhelmed by it. Her eyes squint up at it, still adjusting from the dark, but Jan doesn’t complain because she needs it. She can see the cracks in the ceiling more clearly, and the white of Jackie’s sneakers appear fluorescent on the rack next to the doorway. Together they fill in the cracks and Jan might have to stand on a stepladder to do it but it works. 

Jackie kisses Jan at the end of every day from February to April. Her fingers draw maps across Jan’s skin and dig up sidewalks through each moan that she pulls from her. Jan will push Jackie back onto the bed afterwards and spend hours praying between Jackie’s thighs. Then, they’ll make dinner, and Jan will find herself laughing as Jackie sings along to the radio and dances with a spatula in hand. 

_ “I think I might like you”. _

_ “Just a bit?”. _

_ “A little, yeah”.  _

And it’s good. 

Jackie is there when she needs her and leaves when Jan needs that too. She isn’t forceful, but she makes sure that Jan is supported, in all of the ways that Jan’s been lacking. Jackie is in her last year of residency at the Lenox Hill hospital and it means that their availability clashes often but when they’re together, they’re one. They fall asleep peacefully, mid afternoon on Jan’s couch, and wake up to walk to the sushi restaurant down the street. There, they share plates of maki and nigiri, and when they arrive home Jackie guides Jan to the shower with a gentle hand on the small of her back. 

She strips Jan of her clothes with a tenderness that brings tears to Jan’s eyes, but then presses her against the cold glass of the shower as she fucks her hard and fast. Jan comes on her fingers but Jackie doesn’t stop. She lowers herself to her knees and kisses her way to Jan’s heart while pulling moans and whimpers from her lips. Jan splays her hands out across the frigid tiles and when Jackie doesn't let her return the favour on one occasion, and then another, Jan thinks nothing of it. 

_ “Fuck, Jackie”. _

_ “You’re so good for me”. _

_ “God, right there”.  _

Jan’s birthday falls on the following weekend. They spend the Saturday with their friend groups that are slowly merging and then laze around Jackie’s apartment on the Sunday morning, nursing their hangovers with cups of green tea. Jackie gifts her with a limited copy of  _ Fun Home _ by Alison Bechdel, and the next time that she’s at Jan’s place she hangs a string of lilac fairy lights above her bed. It feels honest and true and the first time that they swap their I love you’s, they’re lit only by the light of a vanilla scented candle. 

For six months, it stays that way.

And then the bulb in Jan’s hallway slowly dims. 

Jan first notices it on a Wednesday. She’s having lunch with Jackie at a small bistro downtown when she gets a text from her landlord. Alexis is a kind woman, a little older than Jan, and she tells her in the politest way that she knows how that the cracks need refilling and the bulb changing. She offers to do it for her but Jan is nothing if not independent and as far as landlords go, Jan knows that she’s lucked out with the woman who owns the apartment as well as the bakery downstairs. 

They replace it without thinking about it. 

Jan transfers to a different theatre company sometime in the fall, and Jackie completes her medical residency in the same month. Things are chaotic until they aren’t but Jan is always comforted by the way that before she takes her shower each night, she’s bathed in the amber light of the hallway. Her skin doesn’t maintain its summer tan right through the winter but the small lightbulb does a good enough job of making her feel like she’s on a beach in The Hamptons rather than in an apartment in Manhattan.

Though she knows that Jackie thinks it’s too bright. 

And she doesn’t tell Jan about it.

Instead she ducks her head, averts her gaze everytime that she walks from Jan’s bedroom to her bathroom and then back again. They have conversations over hastily pulled together breakfast that skirt around the topic, avoiding what needs to be said. Jackie suggests getting one that’s dimmer, or removing the blind from the window in the hallway to let the natural light do its work, but Jan doesn’t like the idea and they never come to a conclusion. 

_ “Jackie-”. _

_ “Not now”. _

_ “Jacks-”. _

_ “Not now”. _

It keeps going, repeating itself. The bulb keeps fading out but Jan is relentless in her attempts at holding onto the dregs of light that it brings. She replaces it again and again, and Jackie helps a little less every time. Eventually when Jan does it, Jackie isn’t there at all, and Jan tries to ignore how the light still blinks each time that she dances beneath it with her cup of coffee cradled close to her chest, even after she clicks in a brand new bulb. 

The filament always sparks, and then fizzles out before Jan’s able to stop it. They discuss it over more glasses of wine than Jan’s able to count and when one breaks, Jan’s heart shatters with it. She doesn’t see Jackie for the next week but by the following Friday Jan decides that having a light that breaks when she least needs it to is better than being cloaked in the darkness that she’s despised ever since she was a child, living at her parents home in Jersey. 

So this time, they replace the bulb together when it fails. 

And then do it again. 

And again. 

And ignore that it might just be faulty wiring. 

_ “This needs to stop”.  _

_ “Please stay”. _

_ “We can’t keep doing this, Jan”.  _

They don’t make it through the winter. Jan spends her days at the theatre and Jackie takes on night shifts at the hospital where she’s working as a registrar. Jan never stops being proud of her and Jackie tells her that she’s proud of Jan too, even as they sleep apart at night. Jackie still buys Jan her favourite croissant from the bakery below her apartment and it’s not much of a consolation but Jan will take a croissant over an argument that can’t be solved by piping hot mugs of green tea and plates of sushi that make her feel sick when she eats too much.

Slowly, the drawer of belongings that Jackie has kept in Jan’s dresser for the best part of the year begins to empty. The least important things go first, like shirts that Jackie’s seemingly forgotten she owns, and a deck of playing cards that had been left behind at Jan’s apartment once after a night of drinking bottles of wine in the spring. Then go the things that Jan never thought would. Jackie takes her jewellery and a scrapbook that she’s had since college and Jan doesn’t see them return. 

It becomes unfair to both of them sometime before the holidays, and Jan cries backstage after finishing one of her shows. She’d usually be upbeat and beaming but the text that she’d received from Jackie that reads  _ we need to talk _ has settled like lead in her gut. She sobs it out in molten tears and lets them burn her cheeks, and when she arrives home it's to the sight of Jackie sitting in her stairwell. Her face is as tear stained as Jan’s is and she’s looking at the still flickering light bulb; she calls it annoying and irritating and tiresome. 

And Jan doesn’t disagree. 

_"I should go"._

_"Yeah"._

_"Call me?"._

_"Maybe"._

So Jan switches off the light when Jackie asks her to. 

And prays that she’ll be able to turn it back on. 


End file.
